Africa welcomes western aid. But donors must ask where the money is going
In 2021, activist Edwin Kiama tweeted a picture of Kenya’s then president, Uhuru Kenyatta, and his deputy William Ruto (now the president) with a caption cautioning the International Monetary Fund (IMF) against lending the country any more money without ensuring better accountability for how it was spent. He was arrested and briefly detained soon afterwards.
The IMF continued to extend loans to Kenya.
In Cameroon, leader of the opposition Kah Walla called on the IMF to demand more accountability from the government on a $335m (£280m) loan that she believed had done little to help poor citizens, and to not give another loan before they had received an account for the previous one.
The IMF nevertheless gave the next loan and the kleptocracy continued, with Walla commenting: “This is complicity.”
This year, in Cameroon, on 23 January, the mutilated body of journalist Martinez Zogo, who had investigated large-scale embezzlement of state funds by a government-linked businessman, was dumped near the capital Yaoundé.
Five days earlier in Rwanda, John Williams Ntwali, one of the few journalists in that country who published stories critical of President Paul Kagame’s government, was killed in a car accident deemed “suspicious” by press freedom organisations.
And on 21 January, human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko was assassinated by gunmen in his home in Eswatini after threats from the country’s king that “mercenaries” would “deal” with activists.
In a recent investigation on trends of repression and resistance in five African countries, published by ZAM magazine, it has become clear that demands for accountability for the management of state budgets of African countries, and particularly the use of donor funds, are growing louder – and also that these demands are either ignored, or are met with murder, torture and imprisonment, added to oppressive laws that muzzle dissenting voices.
The tragic events of last month prove that this is increasingly the response met by African good governance advocates and conscientious journalists.
In turn, the call to western countries to “stop paying our oppressors” is also on the rise. We don’t advocate a total end to aid to impoverished countries in Africa, since this could see health, education and infrastructure crumble, while despotic rulers and their families, who have stashed ill-gotten funds in safe havens, are unlikely to feel the effects of a financial squeeze. But more pressure for accountability from these regimes, and support for those who are demanding better governance and democracy, might help change things.
The people we encountered in the countries we investigated – Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya – are imploring institutions such as the World Bank and IMF to enforce transparency and accountability mechanisms and punish corrupt governments.
They want development partners to take note of the research and the evidence compiled by African media and civil society groups that show corruption and bad governance.
Ruto recently pledged that Kenya will not default on debts and that his government has applied the brakes on borrowing. How do we make sure this promise isn’t broken? Western development partners must stand with civil society groups that want to hold the government accountable.
Sadly, the opposite is happening. Western donor funding for human rights in Kenya has been dwindling as a result of global competition for government contracts, which might go to, say, China, if causes are funded that portray that government in a negative light. Uganda’s aged autocrat leader Yoweri Museveni is still propped up by the west because of his military collaboration in Somalia and elsewhere. As a result of repression combined with falling support from donors, civil society in all the countries we investigated faces an existential threat.
Even laws against money laundering have been weaponised by some rulers to stop funds going to civil organisations. On 22 December 2020, with the country preparing for January elections, Ugandan lawyer and human rights defender Nicholas Opiyo was arrested along with three colleagues and a member of the opposition after his legal charity, Chapter Four, received money from external sources. They spent eight days in detention before being charged with money laundering and “related malicious acts” and released on bail. The charges were quietly dismissed more than a year later.
We are asking western governments not to stop helping, but to reflect on what they are supporting and why. Does it make sense to support an authoritarian and oppressive government such as Uganda because it might otherwise seek an alliance with another authoritarian and oppressive government like China or Russia? Should help not be based on shared democratic values?
The west could also apply more pressure on African organisations such as the African Union, the African Peer Review Mechanism and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; after all it funds a large part of these institutions. It would help if these structures were pressed to do the work they were set up to do, instead of hosting summits at the glittering African Union building in Addis Ababa.
If financial aid policies that empower dictatorial regimes are not modified, we may see even more people from Africa moving across deserts and seas in search of a better life in Europe – that is, those lucky enough not to end up in prison or dead.
EmmanuelMutaizibwa and Ngina Kirori are investigative reporters workingwith the international multimedia platform ZAM
Western development partners must stand with civil society groups that want to hold governments accountable